View full sizeA customer looks over Ford trucks in this file photo. Automakers plan to report full-year 2012 sales Thursday, giving the final tally on what had been a great year for sales.Associated Press

Chrysler will be the first to report early today with the other automakers releasing results throughout the day. Of local interest will be General Motors' Lordstown-built Chevrolet Cruze and Ford's Avon Lake-built van lines and Brook Park-built truck engines.

The Cruze is coming off of a phenomenal 2011, and sales of that vehicle had been down slightly through much of 2012. But in the late summer and early fall, GM began offering more and more of the cars to rental fleets, boosting sales numbers. If that trend continued in December, the Cruze may have matched or topped 2011, but it will have been less profitable in doing so.

Come back to this live blog throughout the day for updates on auto sales.

2:45 p.m.: With the full Toyota numbers in, we can call it. That automaker closed the year up just under 27 percent, thanks mainly to its mainstay big sellers -- the Corolla compact car, the Prius hybrid family and the Camry mid-sized sedan. All three were up sharply for the year.

Still, even with those gains, the Corolla ended the year with about 17 percent of the compact market, behind Honda's 19 percent. Those two companies still dominate sales, but Ford, Chevrolet, Hyundai and Volkswagen all have double-digit market shares.

2:00 p.m.: Hyundai was up 9 percent last year, the smallest gain for that fast-growing company in about five years. Combined with its Kia subsidiary, it's back into double digits, up about 11 percent.

Two small cars drove the company's growth -- the compact Elantra and the weird 3-doored Veloster. The Elantra is a competitor to the Cruze while the Veloster is its own category in the automotive world.

1:42 p.m.: So, playing with my archived data on small cars, this will definitely be another big year for compacts. Even without final numbers from Toyota and Hyundai, small cars are up about 15 percent for the year. Most of that growth is coming from Honda, Ford and Toyota (even without December added in).

GM and the Cruze lost ground in sales leadership, but the compact market remains much more competitive than it was a few years ago. In 2010, Toyota and Honda had a combined 43 percent share of the compact car market, and the only competitor in double digits was Ford at 14 percent. This year, Ford and GM will each close the year at about 15 percent of the compact market, Volkswagen will have about 10 percent and Hyundai will have 11 percent.

1:20 p.m.: Nissan ended the year up just under 10 percent, despite a slight decline in December. The company's Pathfinder sport utility was its biggest hit, but its mainstay vehicles such as the Altima sedan also posted solid results.

Despite a big year for compact cars, with huge numbers from Honda's Civic, Ford's Focus and GM's Chevy Cruze, Nissan's Sentra was down nearly 8 percent despite a big redesign during the year.

1:00 p.m.: Kia posted its best sales year in the U.S. with full-year numbers up 15 percent for 2012. One car, the redesigned Optima, was responsible for almost all of that growth. The near doubling of Optima sales helped cover for flat Kia Soul numbers and declines for the Sedona minivan and Sorento sport utility vehicle.

"Honda began the year intent on recovery," American Honda sales chief John Mendel said in a statement. "We ended 2012 with multiple product awards, a host of sales records, Honda's second best December ever, and tremendous momentum as we head into 2013."

12:00 p.m.: The big boom for auto sales wasn't just for mass-market brands. Porsche's sales were up 21 percent last year, thanks mainly to a new 911.

10:39 a.m.: Toyota will release a more detailed report later today, but the company said its overall sales for the year were up just under 27 percent. Hyundai said its sales were up 9 percent, again without a detailed report on each vehicle.

10:30 a.m.: GM missed its retail target on the Chevy Cruze. The company said over the summer that it wanted to keep the Lordstown-built compact at 80 percent retail, 20 percent fleet for the year. But 38 percent of the Cruze's December sales going to rental companies and other bulk buyers, so the car ended the full year at 25 percent fleet, 75 percent retail.

Those fleet numbers are still far below the results for the Cruze's predecessor, the Chevy Cobalt. More than half of those cars headed to rental fleets as GM phased out that car in 2009 and 2010.

And GM said earlier this year that it is making money on the Cruze models it is selling to rental companies. In the past, automakers sent their excess cars to Avis and Hertz at big losses. Things would get even worse 18-24 months later when the rental companies dumped those vehicles on the used-car market, depressing resale prices.

So the higher fleet numbers for the Cruze are a concern, but the automaker says it is very pleased with the car for 2012. Despite the large number of (mainly low-end) rental cars, GM continued to demand a high price for the Cruze and offered minimal cash-back incentives throughout the year.

10:07 a.m.: Chevy Cruze sales grew slightly from its stellar year in 2011. With 237,738 sold, the Lordstown-built car was up about 3 percent for the year. In December, sales were up 27 percent from 2011's lackluster numbers.

GM did not say how many of those Cruzes were sold to car-rental fleets and how many went to retail customers. For the month, Chevrolet's overall sales were 26 percent fleet, 74 percent retail. Earlier this year, the company said it wanted to keep the Cruze at 20 percent fleet for the year. To hit that target, very few of the December models sold would have been fleet.

Even with the strong December, the Cruze is completely out of the running for the best-selling compact title this year. Though Honda and Toyota haven't reported yet, they'll easily beat the Cruze totals, and with nearly 246,000 sold, the Ford Focus beat it as well. the Cruze will likely fall No. 4 this year.

Still, few expected the car to match 2011's figures, let alone top them. Later this year, GM hopes to revive excitement for the car by launching a diesel version of the Cruze. Union leaders have said hatchback and station wagon models may be on the way as well.

Overall, GM was up 4 percent for the year. Unlike Ford and Chrysler, its pickup sales were flat in 2012, and the company had to shut down several plants late last year to stop inventories from building up.

A bright spot for the company was its luxury performance. Both Cadillac and Buick posted double-digit gains for December, though for the year, those brands were flat (up 1.6 percent at Buick, down 1.7 percent at Cadillac). With 7,008 sold, the compact Cadillac ATS launched late last year, Cadillac's first small car in a decade.

9:50 a.m.: General Motors will be next to report with numbers expected at about 10 a.m.

9:33 a.m.: Ford sales were up a little less than 4 percent for the year, driven mainly by strong pickup sales.

The F-Series line jumped 10 percent for the year, although it was flat in December. Ford has credited the Brook Park-built EcoBoost engine for much of its truck sales growth. The twin-turbo V-6 has been the most popular engine choice in the F-150 for more than a year, far exceeding the company's expectations.

Also doing well was the Focus compact car, a competitor of the Cruze. The Focus was up a whopping 58 percent in December, pushing its full-year total to 245,922 cars, a 40 percent annual gain.

The Econoline van series, built in Avon Lake, was up about 5 percent for the year, but it had a rough December with sales down 8 percent. This year, Ford will start making a new commercial van, the Transit, in Kansas City, and it will begin converting the Avon Lake plant into a commercial truck factory.

8:46 a.m.:Chrysler's numbers are out, and they're quite good. For the full year, sales were up 21 percent, thanks mainly to booming numbers from the Chrysler 300 sedan and the Fiat 500 made by Chrysler's Italian parent company.

Other bright spots included a 17 percent jump in pickup sales for the full year. The numbers were the best sales totals for Chrysler in five years and December capped off 33 consecutive months of sales growth.

"We were again one of the fastest growing automakers in the country," said Reid Bigland, president and chief executive of the Dodge brand and head of Chrysler's sales.

8:38 a.m.: Chrysler typically reports at 8 a.m., and the company promises it will have its numbers out soon, but so far nothing. In other news, consumer research site TrueCar.com says in addition to selling more cars, automakers raked in more money per car last year.

The firm estimates that the average car sold for $31,128 last year, up nearly 2 percent from last year. That record-setting number came mainly from price increases at Honda, Toyota and Hyundai. Hyundai cut back on incentives throughout the year as it ran short on cars, effectively raising prices. And both Honda and Toyota released new, more-expensive versions of their most popular vehicles.

Nissan and GM both had slight declines in their average prices, but in both cases, the drops were far less than 1 percent.

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